How Pseudoscientific Cranks Abuse Freedom

Freedom. How can anyone be against freedom? The simple answer is that people generally are not against freedom. It is often a core value in various political ideologies and play a central role in the law of many counties to the point of being ingrained in our social conscious. Therefore, predictably, a lot of pseudoscientific cranks abuse the notion of freedom for their own malevolent goals. Claims about health freedom is used to attack science-based medicine and promote dangerous and non-effective “treatments”. Holocaust denial is defended by appealing to freedom of speech. Various forms of creationism or climate change denialism is infiltrating education via academic freedom bills.

“Health Freedom”

A typical defense of quack medicine or anti-vaccination is talking about health freedom. Surely, people should be able to decide for themselves what type of medication they put in their bodies? Sure, but promoting anti-science quackery negates informed consent, because patients are basing their decision on false information. So, in an ironic twist of events, quack medicine is actually incompatible with real health freedom: the ability to decide what treatment is most rational for yourself based on the best available scientific evidence. Real health freedom also means freedom from cranks that exploit you for money and access to the standard of care from modern medicine. For quack medicine providers, health care freedom is a malevolent method for avoiding science-based quality control while still providing substandard care. Often far substandard care.

“Freedom of Speech”

In Obliterating The Free Speech Objection to Criticism, I took on the free speech objection in its most general form: the central fallacy was that such an objection confused free speech with the (non-existent) right to stand unchallenged. In this section, I will be taking on a more subtle and subversive formulation.

A common defense of the ability for Holocaust deniers is to spew their nonsense on university campuses is to point out that those that see the problem with this is against free speech. This is erroneous because free speech is about how governments are not allowed, with rare exceptions, to limit your speech. The right to free speech does not itself regulate what universities and other private institutions are allowed to disallow. They are perfectly within their right not to have Holocaust deniers spreading their misinformation. This of course also ties into another common denialist tactic, namely playing the martyr card. By not being allowed to hold talks at universities, they consider themselves oppressed by the establishment. In reality, the university is just upholding basic intellectual and academic standards. They think that it is more important to avoid giving holocaust denial and hate a platform and they are within their right to think that and act on it by not allowing holocaust deniers to hold talks on their property.

There are laws against holocaust denial in certain countries. There are problems with these laws, but free speech is not absolute, not even in the United States. The main concern is that free speech has to be balanced against other consequentialist goals. While such a discussion requires more than a single blog post, there are reasons to question free speech absolutism and to accept at least some free speech restrictions, such as false advertisement, concrete threats of harm, child pornography etc. Whether holocaust denial should fall under free speech restrictions is a matter of debate: on the one hand it may increase the power of playing the martyr card, but on the other, it may give a platform for antisemitism and racism.

“Academic Freedom”

In recent years, bills appealing to academic freedom to allow teachers to teach creationism and intelligent design has resurfaced in various U. S. states. The academic freedom argument existed in previous forms in creationism as well, but it is exploded with the emergence of intelligent design creationism. The general idea is this: teachers supposedly have an academic freedom to teach what they see fit, and any regulation of that is oppression. In reality, academic freedom for teachers has to do with their right to write e. g. letters to the editor, publish or discuss research without facing repercussions from the school they are working on. Academic freedom does not allow teachers to teach whatever they want, such as creationism, drugs are cool, that HIV does not exist etc. Teachers are bound by the education standards in their state.

Conclusion

Appealing to “freedom” to defend pseudoscience is a socially successful strategy, but intellectually bankrupt. In reality, they represent the exact opposite of freedom. Spreading misinformation about medical treatments denies the patient the ability to make informed decision about their health and spreading creationism in the education system is unfair to both teachers, students and society. In this context, freedom ought to mean the freedom from pseudoscientific propaganda and misinformation. They are abusing the notion of freedom, their actions reflect badly on social libertarians, and it is a distraction from issues of real freedom violations occurring around the world.

2 responses to “How Pseudoscientific Cranks Abuse Freedom”

On Good Day Sacramento last week, Rob Schneider was appealing to “religious freedom” to support California allowing religious exemption for kids whose parents don’t want them vaccinated. Currently, those kids are not allowed to attend public school unless they are vaccinated. What boggles my mind is why is it trampling on their freedom to keep other people’s kids safe? Freedom from deadly childhood illnesses is more important than their freedom to go to a public school without following the rules that everyone else has to follow.

Debunking Denialism

Modern life presents us with an apparent paradox: science has a strong cultural authority, yet primitive darkness is coming back in the shape of creationism, quack medicine, opposition to vaccination, HIV/AIDS denialism, anti-psychiatry and so on.

Debunking Denialism takes on the enemies of reason.

Article Library

If you want to read more content from Debunking Denialism, check out the article library, or the main content below.

"I realize that 'complementary and alternative medicine' (CAM) or, what quackademics like to call it now, 'integrative medicine' (IM) is meant to refer to 'integrating' alternative therapies into SBM or 'complementing' SBM with a touch of the ol’ woo, but I could never manage to understand how 'integrating' quackery with SBM would do anything but weaken the scientific foundation of medicine."

- David Gorski, cancer surgeon and debunker of pseudoscience (source).

"Postmodernism, the school of 'thought' that proclaimed 'There are no truths, only interpretations' has largely played itself out in absurdity, but it has left behind a generation of academics in the humanities disabled by their distrust of the very idea of truth and their disrespect for evidence, settling for 'conversations' in which nobody is wrong and nothing can be confirmed, only asserted with whatever style you can muster."

"If I am ignorant about a phenomenon, that is a fact about my state of mind, not a fact about the phenomenon; to worship a phenomenon because it seems so wonderfully mysterious, is to worship your own ignorance; a blank map does not correspond to a blank territory, it is just somewhere we haven’t visited yet"

"As an aside, it is ironic that CAM proponents often simultaneously tout how individualized their treatment approach is, but then claim that one product or treatment can cure all cancer. Meanwhile they criticize the alleged cookie-cutter approach of mainstream medicine, which is actually producing a more and more individualized (and evidence-based) approach to such things as cancer."

- Steven Novella, neurologist and founder of the New England Skeptical Society. (source).

"Twenty epidemiologic studies have shown that neither thimerosal nor MMR vaccine causes autism. These studies have been performed in several countries by many different investigators who have employed a multitude of epidemiologic and statistical methods. The large size of the studied populations has afforded a level of statistical power sufﬁcient to detect even rare associations. These studies, in concert with the biological implausibility that vaccines overwhelm a child’s immune system, have effectively dismissed the notion that vaccines cause autism. Further studies on the cause or causes of autism should focus on more-promising leads."

"To me, skepticism is not believing what someone tells you, investigating all the information before coming to a conclusion. Skepticism is a good thing. Global warming skepticism is not that. It’s the complete opposite of that. It’s coming to a preconceived conclusion and cherry-picking the information that backs up your opinion. Global warming skepticism isn’t skepticism at all."

- John Cook, Climate Communication Fellow for the Global Change Institute at the University of Queensland (source).

"Some people accused me of being pro-Muslim in Bosnia but I realised that our job is to give all sides an equal hearing, but in cases of genocide you can't just be neutral. You can't just say, 'Well this little boy was shot in the head and killed in besieged Sarajevo and that guy over there did it but maybe he was upset because he had an argument with his wife.' No, there is no equality there and we had to tell the truth."

“In our reasonings concerning matter of fact, there are all imaginable degrees of assurance, from the highest certainty to the lowest species of moral evidence. A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence.”